DENVER - Seattle U's Blaise Wittenauer-Lee and CSU Bakersfield's Carlee Burks have been named Western Athletic Conference Swimmer and Diver of the week, respectively, for Jan. 11-17.
Wittenauer-Lee earned five individual wins and one relay victory over the weekend as Seattle U competed in back-to-back meets at the U.S. Air Force Academy. She started Friday's meet by anchoring the 400 medley relay, posting a 100 free split of 51.48 seconds, fastest among all of the anchor legs, to help the Redhawks win the event with a total time of 3:56.86, ninth-best in program history. She won the 200 individual medley by almost four full seconds in 2:07.91 (2:06.31 altitude adjusted - her best of the season and 8th on the WAC performance list), followed by a dominating victory in the 200 breaststroke by over 10 seconds in 2:19.44 (2:17.84 altitude adjusted - another season best to remain third on WAC performance list). Saturday, she won the 400 individual medley by over a full second with a time of 4:39.32, followed by a close victory in the 100 freestyle by just 4/100ths of a second with a time of 53.75 seconds. She completed the weekend with a convincing win in the 100 breaststroke by almost four full seconds with a time of 1:04.84. Wittenauer-Lee was a major reason Seattle U picked up two victories over South Dakota and two wins over conference rival Northern Colorado over the weekend.
Burks, a junior from Bakersfield, Calif. (Centennial HS) continued an outstanding season by putting her skills to the test against some of the nation's top talents featuring schools like UCLA, USC, Utah, and Cal. Burks opened the meet with a solid score of 274.60 to finish 13th among 45 women in the 1-meter competition. Her score would have been good enough to qualify for the NCAA Zone E Diving Championships had she not already done so earlier this season.She went on to impress the judges on Saturday with a fifth-place finish on the 3-meter board. Burks' score of 313.50 was her second best of the season after she smashed the CSUB record last week (337.28), but qualified her for the Zone E meet in March in her second event.
Other swimmer nominees: Northern Arizona's Alina Staffeldt won both of her individual events, sweeping the butterfly events in NAU's dual meet versus Colorado State on Saturday. She led a one-two-three NAU sweep in the 200m butterfly with a time of 2:19.35 and then proceeded to win the 100m butterfly by nearly three seconds with a time of 1:03.40. Staffeldt also swam on NAU's ‘A' teams in both relays with second-place finishes in the 200m medley relay and the 200m freestyle relay. Staffeldt swam the first leg of the 200m free team that was just narrowly edged out of first at the end by .01 seconds. Northern Colorado's Valeria Mihhailova earned 72 team points for the Bears in individual events throughout the two days (54 against South Dakota, 16 against Air Force, and 20 against Seattle) and was in the 400 free relay that earned top honors against all three opponents on Day 2 and the 200 free relay that earned top honors against South Dakota and 2nd place against both Air Force and Seattle.
Other diver nominees: NM State's MacKinna Hauff won the 3-meter dive with a score of 286.95. She finished second in the 1-meter dive with a score of 274.65. With these results, she qualified for zones in both events. Northern Arizona's Chelsea Jackson picked up another pair of qualifying scores on Saturday versus Colorado State in another outstanding performance. On 3-meter, she placed third overall but did notch a season-best score of 283.35 before she took home the win on 1-meter with a score of 296.93. Northern Colorado's Savanna Meadows had another NCAA Zones qualifying score in the 1M on Day 1 of the quad-meet and earned points for the Bears both days in both sets of dives.